We commissioned a new computer system last week for GPU development. It consists of 3 workstations delivered by Puget systems.
- uri: Dual CPU 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon 8 core + 4 x Titan X
- schwyz: Dual CPU 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon 8 core + 2 x Tesla K40c + 3 x 6 TB HDD
- unterwalden: Single CPU 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon 8 core + 4 x Titan X
each equipped with 128 GB RAM and a 512 GB M.2 SSD.
The M.2 disks are interfacing directly to the PCIx bus on the motherboard, and allow for very fast i/o. Determined to be at around 800 MB/s sequential write (as opposed to 150 MB/s on the SATA drives).
We decided to investigate consumer grade cards (here Titan X) that do have lower double precision throughput than the scientific grade Teslas, and also lack EEC memory, but cost about 3-4x less.
The system serves several purposes:
- investigate single vs. double precision
- investigate importance of CPU speed
- consumer vs. scientific grade hardware
- efficiently develop CUDA code
- run number crunching jobs at otherwise idle times
We are also looking forward to the new Nvidia Pascal architecture.